The Blenheim World
• FEW women have ever been more • laden with common sense than Sarah Duchess of Marlborough. She had a very clear contempt for the unsuccessful. Her letters all reveal a combative deep material contentment, a consciousness of all that she and her great husband had achieved. It was, perhaps, the heyday of the high Whig "interest," and no succeeding generation was to.mqve through that oligarchic pattern with the like assurance. The Duchess approved, she could not but approve, of young Lord Chesterfield ; but by his time a brittle quality had appeared in the cool reasoning. Het own approach was more robust, that granite outlook and the stone- like prose. At a first examination the Duchess of Marlborough's life held that monolithic character that one associates with Blenheim. Letters of a Grandmother, 1732-1735: Being theGorrespondence of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, with her granddaughter, Diana Duchess of Bedford. Edited by Gladys Scott Thomson. (Cape. los. 6d.)
She was seventy-two at the opening of the period of three years which these letters to her granddaughter cover. Her accounts of persons were conveyed in that devastating smashing idiom which is so far removed from Lord Hervey's careful tired antitheses. " As to my Lady Sunderland," she writes of her grandson's wife, " I can say nothing of my own knowledge, but she has very different characters given her. Some people say she is simple, ill-bred and knows nothing of a right behaviour. Others that she has a termagant spirit and is ill-natured." There is one class of person on whom the Duchess expends her tart and bridled sympathy, those she describes as " valuable women with fortunes married to. brutes."
These letters are edited most skilfully, and Miss Scott Thomson has brought to bear upon the commentary a profound knowledge of the domestic history and taste of Georgian England. The setting of the correspondence is in consequence as attractive as it is convincing. • The detailed . accuracy is remarkable. As trilling points, Walmoden should read Wallmoden, and there is a slight confusion about the Duchess of Kendal's children. The minor architectural sidelights are fascinating. " My taste having always been to have things plain and clean from a piece of wainscott to a lady's face." We can see the new pier glasses, " the white painting with so much red damask," " the proportion of the valiance to the cornice." Still, it is the character that is revealed that is impressive. The Duchess hated Grmany and loved her hard litigious ease.
" And as to my two grandsons, they cannot help their weakness, nor is there any reason to apprehend any deep plot from them, they have only given a great wound to their characters." On her grand- daughter Lady Bateman : " She is a great favourite at- Court, and that must be from the hopes the ministers have of dividing a family, who, if they were wise, would be strong enough to make any ministry afraid of ,disobliging them." " But none but the greatest fool and wretch in the world, as the Duke of St. Albans certainly is, would ask favour in any place where those he has used so very unhandsomely have the power." Walpole, who ruled the country, she detested. " I had yesterday a great deal of conversation with a very wise and great citizen,' who is very knowing in foreign affairs and likewise the state of England. And he told me that it was plain that England would entirely be ruined, but just the time he could not say." On Queen Anne : " I have a satisfaction in show- ing this respect to her, because her kindness to me was real. And what happened afterwards was compassed by the contrivance of such as are in power now." On her daughter Henrietta': "The modestest young creature that ever I saw, till she was flattered and practised upon by the most vile people upon earth."' ' Each letter breathes a clear determination on her rights. Her rigid high assurance was based and indestructible. Her life was seen in grand terms and was not without its victory. DAVID. MATHEW.
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